For I Have Sinned
by Sirabella
Summary: Norman Hill's empty home is still haunting Jordan, but when her own family history rears its head, can Dave Rossi help her put both nightmares behind her? Spoilers for "Normal." Rated highly for Criminal Minds themes, just to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

_A Jackson Pollock painting. Sick, but that was what it reminded her of. The sheet was a white canvas, like the lost life of the girl underneath, and both were blood-soaked and ruined. Jordan didn't lift the sheet, and it wasn't because of crime scene contamination. The pale hair spilling lifelessly out from under it told her enough. It was her guilt made manifest. She eased the door shut behind her in some measure of respect for the dead but couldn't help turning back. The colorful, childish letters at eye-level spelled out the name of the murdered teenager. The room was empty now. No more deafening music, no more exorbitant phone bills, no more nail-polish sleepovers. All of their scheming to catch a killer had not prepared her for the real thing. Beautiful, innocent things trussed up like flies in a web. Poison running through the veins of this family, paralyzing it forever in this grisly mock-up of a home, once a fortress of love and protection from the evil outside._

_SASHA. Here she lies._

_Jordan turned and made a break for the front door. She vaguely heard steps hurrying up behind her as she finally sank to the ground under the weight._

"Jordan?" She leapt around, and seeing Dave Rossi's startled face inches from hers caused her to flinch as she smothered the onset of a second ungainly pirouette. "Hey, kiddo," he said softly, backing away and holding his hands up in surrender. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."

"Sorry," she muttered in the direction of his second shirt button. "I've... been a little jumpy lately."

"Spring-loaded, I'd say," he gently pointed out. "Something on your mind?"

_Yeah, camping on it._ _Bonfire, s'mores, the whole nine yards. _"Nah, I'm fine. Still getting used to my new schedule, that's all. I got more sleep than this in college."

"Nightmares?" was his shrewd reply. But Jordan wasn't going there, not now, not even with him. Maybe especially not with him. She was grateful for the wisp of comfort he'd managed to drape over the horror of that haunting California afternoon, but she wasn't entirely sure he couldn't see through her eyes straight into her fears and insecurities. She liked him, she really did, but she didn't want to be that vulnerable when she still knew him so little. She smiled at the combination of concern and problem-solving eagerness that laced his expression. It figured that she'd saddle herself with the best profiler in the bunch as a father confessor.

"I'm just a little distracted, it's fine," she brushed him off lightly. He nodded, obviously unconvinced.

"Just remember what I said; cut yourself some slack. And Jordan"—she had turned to flee for the relative safety of her desk—"I _can_ just listen, you know." His smile was genuinely self-deprecating, and Jordan found herself smiling back.

"I know."

_Five weeks later_

There hadn't been any warning. She'd always known there wouldn't be, but she had never wanted to dwell on such stormy weather so far off on a distant horizon. But here she sat, surrounded by the team, half of them dozing, manila folders scattered across her lap and the seat next to her, just another day at the airborne office, and he was somewhere down there, blinking his way into the daylight he didn't deserve ever to see again. Trying to find out if there were any shards of his miserable existence to glue back together again. Hopefully Irvin Todd had forgotten he had ever had a daughter. She couldn't speak to what he might do if he did remember, and she would rather not picture it.

Jordan's hands shook as she sifted back through the current case files. She knew now why J.J. had needed such a long maternity leave. Who would be in a hurry to leave their safe home and sweet baby boy for the opportunity to live through a week like this—only to have four more candidates for Worst Vacation Spot in the History of the World clamoring for her attention the minute it was done? And if that weren't enough, after the phone call she'd received this morning, every misty unsub was graced in her mind with her father's demonic features. Every victim—bleeding, empty-eyed, battered or, in one case, broken in half—wore her mother's face. Not only disturbing, but annoying, since her mother was not dead.

Although sometimes she still wished she were, Jordan knew. _Nightmares, pumpkin, nightmares. Terrors that just wait for the sun to sink low, way down low, bowing at their feet before they sneak into my head, and I see your Papa stalkin' toward me like he was huntin' a baby deer that's frozen in its little tracks; and then I wake up. Thank the good Lord. Used to be I didn't come out of it 'til the whole thing had played itself all out again in my dreams. _Parole, she scoffed. What a joke. 'Papa' needed to be strung up with barbed wire. Unfortunately, Jordan's mother believed that justice might be slow, but it was waiting for her ex-husband with claws and executioner's axe outstretched. It was the only thing she and Jordan still fought over. The FBI had seemed as good a way as any to give Lady Justice that extra little kick in the rear that she often exhibited a desperate need for, in Jordan's thoroughly biased opinion.

And yet, she'd failed the first test. It still thoroughly galled her after more than a month that if she hadn't had this team around her, these friends, she might have just turned right back around and left the heavy lifting to those who knew what they were doing. But they'd saved her, all of them. First Dave Rossi, then Emily—even Hotch, after all their butting horns—had emphatically insisted that it was ok if she wasn't strong enough, analytical enough, cold enough. None of them had used those words, but that was what she saw as they worked the cases. As soon as the level of human desecration began to rise, the masks fell, shuttering down over their expressions and making Jordan shiver every time at the virtual strangers her friends became as they drew the lines in the sand between their hearts and the carnage.

The shift back often left her reeling as Morgan told a joke, Reid became awkward and boyish once more and Emily shared details of yet another disastrous date that always left Jordan wondering if men really were from Mars or had just drifted to an evolutionary halt soon after losing the fur. Garcia's voice on the phone was always a much-needed blast of fresh air in her lungs, but then, Garcia never visited the crime scenes or talked to the families. Photos and videos were horrible enough, but they still weren't entirely real. Hotch made her mad, but he always understood her side, and at least he didn't try to jump down her throat, it just happened. Which she understood, and could live with.

Dave Rossi was different. He didn't make her feel left behind. He was teaching her what he knew without making it seem too callous, too difficult or too gut-wrenching. Galvanizing, maybe, and obviously a challenge he craved, but then, it was obvious that he cared for the victims, and it never stopped being about them. His ego could have crushed her hometown like Godzilla on speed, but it only fed on his successes, and she had seen with painful clarity how his failures wounded him. And he was gentle to a fault, occasionally causing her to blow up in his face and demand that he stop treating her like a child. She would come to apologize later and somehow be surprised every time to receive only a "don't worry about it" and an offer to buy her a cup of coffee. She wasn't used to being forgiven, or forgiving, so easily.

Which brought her back to the present and the threat that would gain in imminence once more when the plane touched down. _Please, God,_ she prayed, _if you're there, and you're listening, please don't let him remember me._ She'd already insisted on protection for her mother, who had argued her down to one bodyguard and one occasional police check-up, but she hadn't bothered for herself, knowing that five armed and pissed-off profilers would be protection enough. _They can't be with me all the time, though, _her brain whispered. _And how will they know what they might be dealing with if I don't say anything?_ The problem was knowing where to begin. It was all so long ago, and she didn't want the team to have to deal with her personal ghosts. _And I'm afraid of dumping all this on them in case they decide it's not worth it._ She cared for them all so much, but she wasn't too keen on testing their reciprocity at this point.

It didn't seem like she'd have much of a choice, though. Besides the fact that she couldn't know whether or not she was actually in danger, when she looked up, she found that Rossi had at some point claimed the seat next to her and had obviously noticed that she'd been staring at the same page of the file in her hands for the last fifteen minutes.


	2. Chapter 2

"Welcome back," he murmured. "Where'd you go?"

Now or never. "Dave, I have to tell you something, and you're not going to like it. Just promise you'll let me finish before you say anything."

"That's what my first _and_ second wives said right before they told me they wanted a divorce." His smile vanished as a tear spilled down her cheek, and she turned her face away. He immediately reached for her hand, squeezing it penitently. "Christ, Jordan, I'm sorry. Of course you can tell me."

"I know," she whispered, still keeping her gaze on the clouds whipping past. "It's just, I need your help, and this isn't easy for me. Please just let me get it out." He obediently said nothing, only squeezed her hand more tightly, and she managed to turn her eyes back to his. "It's my father," she began. "He's not a good man. He's a criminal, and... he's been in jail ever since I could walk. But he's out now, and I'm scared. He hurt my mother, made her suffer more than I think she's even admitted to me. She attempted suicide twice, when I was 8 and again when I was 13. I'm worried what he'll do, what she'll do if she sees him again. And I don't know if he remembers me. He was always drunk or stoned, or both, when he _was_ around. But what if he does? And what if he wants to see me?"

"Over my dead body." Jordan shivered at his tone. It was low and cold and completely devoid of mercy. She hadn't known he could sound like that. "Before you say it, yes, I know you can take care of yourself," he continued in his usual tones.

Jordan smirked, paradoxically relieved by both his declaration and his step back from its sinister promise. _It's only what I wanted in the first place._ "I didn't tell you so you could tell me I can take care of myself."

Rossi laughed. "Understood. Count me in, kiddo."

"Us, too." Jordan looked up. Reid's head was poking over the back of the seat in front of her, and as she glanced at the others, she saw that although they hadn't moved, they were all looking in her direction. Morgan's headphones had even taken a header and were curled lifelessly around his ankles. Jordan sniffed and leaned back in her seat, relaxing under their eyes. She could feel the icy stranglehold on her insides dissolving, the warmth of Rossi's hand in hers, the press of his shoulder against hers, and she allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

Jordan spent the next few days with nerves so on edge she thought she could hear them buzzing beneath her skin, sizzling through her until she bubbled with restless energy. She knew the others were always watching her, although they were so subtle it would have gone unnoticed if she hadn't been in hypervigilant mode. With one exception. Rossi was open and unashamed of his scrutiny. He followed her nearly everywhere, although she was relieved to see him stop short of accompanying her inside the ladies' restroom. Either he did have some sense of decency, or he thought her father did. Jordan gave an involuntary snort. Yes, the man would tyrannize his wife and child until they cowered at the sound of his voice, but he would certainly shrink from compromising a woman's right to pee in private. Right.

Aside from the constant fear of seeing her father pop up around every corner, Jordan had the added inner whirlpool of being warmed one minute and infuriated the next by Rossi's mother bear act. They nearly came to blows one day; or she did, anyway.

"Damn it, Rossi!" She'd just grabbed some files from her desk with the intention of heading to Garcia with some ideas for narrowing down the suspect pool, and when she turned back to the door, he was standing two feet away. The files went flying. He said nothing but contritely bent down and began gathering them up. "Ok. Ok. We need to talk."

"Sorry, Jordan, I didn't mean to scare you."

"I know, Dave, but you did! You are! I go for coffee, you're there. I go to Hotch's office, you're there. I can't go put on lipstick without feeling that if I look up at the mirror, you might be standing behind me. I wouldn't be surprised if you started following me home and standing guard outside my bedroom door. Dave, I know you're just trying to help, but at this rate, it's not my father that's going to get me; I'm going to die of a heart attack from the stress of worrying about you worrying about me!"

Rossi silently picked up the last of the scattered papers and dropped them back on Jordan's desk. He turned to face her, and Jordan took a step back at the expression of deadly earnestness in his eyes. "Listen to me, kid," he practically growled. "You are terrified of a man you can barely remember. I am not leaving you alone. Put a bell around my neck for all I care. But if this piece of crap thinks he's getting within fifty yards of you, he'd better think again. Or else my gun and his tonsils are getting a formal introduction."

Jordan had spent a lot of time growing up wondering what it would be like to have a father. A real father. Not the mistake, the cosmic joke she actually had, but someone like the other kids' dads who helped them with their homework and took them to games and asked them how their days had gone. She'd wondered what it would look like if God ever stepped up and corrected his mistake. And it had taken Him long enough, she thought, but here was her answer.

She did not cry. She wouldn't. She only draped her arms around his neck and squeezed. His arms circled around her in return, but his voice sounded bewildered. "I missed something here. Not surprising, when there's a woman involved, but this seems like a big something."

"I'm sorry."

"Ok, that part is new. And you've completely lost me."

Jordan laughed. "Alright, how's this for familiar: shut up, Rossi! I meant I'm sorry for yelling at you. Because I do want you in my corner, always. And I won't forget it ever again."

"Well, good. As long as we understand each other."

"And I'm not forgetting about the bell, either."

Jordan didn't make him wear a bell. But she did get more skilled at perking up her ears just before she moved anywhere, which did a great deal to prevent any further close encounters and flying paperwork. On the other hand, now her concentration was suffering from her epiphany when she really would rather it didn't, during team briefings and investigations… All the time, really.

With the result that a case came to her desk and sat, buried, in a large pile of similar folders, for a day and a half before she re-read it, and read it a third time, and finally realized what it meant.

This was one of the rare moments when Rossi wasn't haunting her doorway, so she raced off to find him at top speed, and predictably, found him at top speed, although both were, luckily, empty-handed this time.

"Dave." She couldn't say anything else for a little while, so they waited through her pulse hammering and her lungs burning. "It's him. Look." And she thrust the folder at his chest.

"Slow down, kiddo. What am I looking at?"

"Three women. In and around Baltimore, never far from my hometown. I didn't see it before, I'm such an idiot. In their homes, raped and murdered. There's very little physical evidence, but all of them look a little bit like my mother. And…there's this." She pointed to crime scene photos from all three murders. There were cuts on each woman's left hip. And they spelled…"It. Do you see that? The detectives thought he was just objectifying them, saying they were just things, objects. But they're not words; they're his initials. He's – he's signing his work."

Dave's face was grim. "It's a good possibility. If your – if he has graduated after long years in prison from abuse to serial murder."

Jordan nodded. "I'd bet on it. He enjoys inflicting pain on others, watching them suffer, and he's incapable of remorse or compassion. And now, he's out and about where he has access to potential victims."

Dave's expression tightened. "And the means of carrying out revenge scenarios. Your mother would have been his first target, but for some reason, he didn't feel up to confronting her right off the bat. This first one was messy; lots of hesitation and insecurity. And hatred. A practice run. The kills get cleaner and more calculated. He's gathering his control, gaining confidence, finding out what he likes best. Making sure he has the patience to draw out the pain. He wants the one that matters to be perfect."

He finally seemed to realize what he was saying and to whom; he snapped out of it and instantly folded in on himself when he caught sight of her staring at him, wide-eyed and shivering. "God. This isn't… Come on, come with me. I'm parking you in my office, and then I'm briefing the team."

"Dave, no, I'm—"

"In danger. Which is why, after you miss the briefing where I tell everyone in detail what this son of a bitch has in store for your mother, and you get half of Baltimore PD sitting on her house, we'll get out there, grab the other half and find the bastard."


End file.
